— And Green won’t be the only receiving threat. While Richt praised the progress of Tavarres King and Kris Durham, he also said the tight ends will play a much more significant role in the offense this season than they had in the recent past.

“For a while there, whether through injuries or recruiting, we didn’t quite have the guys who could become a mismatch for a linebacker or safety, but we have that now,” Richt said. “So we’ll definitely use the tight ends, and I’d imagine we’ll have more two tight-end sets than we have since the days of having Watson and McMichael at the same time.”

Ain’t nothing wrong with that. Personally, I welcome our new tight end overlords.

… As things stand now, every Georgia player is expected to be ready for the start of preseason practice in August. “It’s the first time I can remember any team I have ever coached where 100 percent of the players are due to be healthy enough to participate at the beginning of camp,” Richt said. “Which is huge.”

It’s funny how people who toss out antitrust complaints about the BCS and accuse the Big 6 of behaving monolithically in suppressing economic fairness don’t have much to say about the dog-eat-dog, every-conference-for-itself nature of Big Ten expansion and the dominoes that might be set in play as a result.

“My hope is whoever starts it doesn’t do anything excessive. The idea of a 16-team conference just messes up everything. I hope that doesn’t happen. I just think it would be … it would end up being harmful to a lot of people.”

… That said, these two men do occupy the hottest seats in the SEC. One might be hotter than the other, but if you look at the hottest in the East and hottest in the West, Richt and Miles are on top.

It’s a sad world we live in when somebody can compare the current resumes of Steve Spurrier and Mark Richt and conclude with an apparently straight face that Richt sits on the hottest seat in the SEC East.

… So If UGA belly-flops in 2010, might boosters stop writing checks? Might Sanford Stadium be overrun by rival fans? If so, Richt’s bosses might be forced to take action.

If, if, if. I’ve got a proposal for everyone who wants to indulge in this tiresome hot seat speculation: tell us what the 2010 belly flop will be and why. Otherwise, you’re just jerking our chains.

(2) Hale is reporting that, “From what I’ve been told, he truly wants to play receiver now and that’s not much of an option at UGA apparently.” Does that mean that the coaches would rather have him leave the program entirely than change positions now?

… After spending all spring — and the first month afterward — assuring fans that no quarterback had won the starting job yet, Richt relented somewhat Wednesday, saying that it would be likely that Murray, a redshirt freshman, would be the starter and appeared ready for the job.

“He’s to the point, in my opinion, where he just needs to play,” Richt said.

So, yeah, it looks like this came down to a duel between Gray, insisting that a move to receiver was in his best interest if he wanted a chance to see the field in a meaningful way, and the coaches, with their (justified) concern about the lack of depth such a move would create at quarterback. In the end, it looks like Richt graciously conceded on the matter.

Although he sounds like a man who’s not completely shutting his options down,

… While Richt said Gray’s work at receiver would likely eliminate his chances of being the starter — and thus making Aaron Murray the de facto winner of the competition — the position change wouldn’t necessarily mean Gray would be dropped from the depth chart altogether.

“I don’t know what (Mason) can do,” Richt said. “If he’s ready, he’ll still play. If we don’t think he’s ready, I would be more than happy to have Logan continue to be our No. 2 and then just go from there.”

… it’s hard to see how you can give a lot of meaningful snaps in practice to someone who’s willingly relegated himself to little more than an emergency option at quarterback.

Well, at the least the college football blogosphere is starting to question all the preseason love directed the Hogs’ way.

Here’s Matt Hinton’s take on the lofty rankings Arkansas is garnering on preseason Top 25 lists, for example:

… In every case, those positions also establish Arkansas as the No. 3 team in the SEC, behind only Alabama and Florida – even according to Staples, who declines to rank Auburn, Georgia, LSU, Ole Miss, South Carolina or Tennessee at all – and thus the odds-on favorite to challenge the Gator-Tide duopoly at the top of the conference. Relative to the SEC standings, that’s nearly unprecedented: The preseason consensus has only pegged the Hogs higher than third in the West Division once (in 1999) since they joined the league in 1992. In other words, this outfit will be expected to at least match (and possibly exceed) the best seasons in the school’s SEC era.

That being said, Matt’s actually pretty sanguine about Arkansas’ chances this season. Not so Brian Cook, who looks at the Razorbacks and sees this year’s Ole Miss.

… This year’s Ole Miss, at least as far as upstart SEC programs getting “this ballot isn’t last year’s ballot” votes in a lot of preseason polls, is Arkansas. The Razorbacks have the touted junior-to-be quarterback that NFL teams are supposedly drooling over (although in Ryan Mallett’s case his close resemblance to an artillery weapon will see him, you know, drafted, even if he has a Snead-like addiction to living dangerously), the season-ending push, and the bowl win. Well… sort of. Arkansas’s bowl win was not over a one-loss top five team but East Carolina, and the season-ending explosion came against Eastern Michigan, South Carolina, Troy, Mississippi State, and LSU, with the LSU game that finished the regular season an actual loss. But by God, Ryan Mallett can throw it through a wall.

He then slides into the regression to the mean/turnover margin discussion that Jerry Hinnen and I have engaged in this week, and concludes with this:

… Arkansas, obviously, bounced up a whopping 22 turnovers [Ed. – I think it’s 24.] and will now be sliding back into the back, in all likelihood. Having a veteran quarterback will help, but not enough to keep that turnover margin at 15. The Tebow child returned this year for Florida and the Gators’ margin plummeted from +22 to +7.

Arkansas this year is likely to be Arkansas last year: wildly erratic, capable of beating anyone in the league, capable of losing to anyone. On the other hand, may I turn your attention to Georgia?

What he’s hinting at the end there, Dawg fans, is something Jerry noted (which I copied as an update in my earlier post that probably was passed over and bears repeating now).

… Here’s what jumps out at me: from ‘02 to ‘08 eight teams had margins greater than or equal to either +15 or -15, and seven of those saw their margin swing by a minimum of 13 turnovers the following season. (2003 MSU is the sole exception.) Average swing for those seven teams? 16.4.

This would seem to indicate that Alabama may have a tougher time repeating than expected, and that Arkansas–hey, they were +15 last year, whaddya know–may also have a hard time living up to the hype.

On the flip side of that, how good a year do you think 2010 can be for Georgia if it merely breaks even on turnovers?

It will be some time before anyone accurately can assess Charlie Weis’ complete severance package from Notre Dame. But his compensation for at least one fiscal year provides some clarity in the mystery surrounding the ex-Irish football coach’s income.

Weis earned $2,927,090 from July 2008 to June 2009, according to federal tax documents the Tribune obtained Wednesday.

Whether that money Notre Dame reported on its Form 990 tax return for that fiscal year represents the full scope of the ex-Irish football coach’s income is unclear.

But that’s not the best part. Here’s the punchline:

And ex-football coach Ty Willingham remained on the university payroll, so to speak, for yet one more year, earning $650,000 from Notre Dame — $910 more than Weis was paid, officially, by the school. [Emphasis added.]